


i see myself in someone else

by eynn



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, having fun playing with how the shrine of resurrection actually works, selective mutism, these characters are not ocs i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2020-04-23 07:38:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19146496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: When Calamity Ganon attacked, all of the Champions were in Hyrule Castle. The Princess unlocked her powers much earlier, saving some of Hyrule, but she, her knight, and all four of the Champions vanished.A hundred years later, a Sheikah and a Gerudo wake in the Shrine of Resurrection, with no idea who or where they are.





	1. waking up

The Sheikah blinked, once, twice, and the haze over her sight cleared slowly. The ceiling was dark, and all around her was a cool blue glow. As the thick clear liquid ran away, off her body and down into some hidden drain, she began to shiver, but a warm strong breeze dried her before she could gather herself enough to even move.

Her muscles ached horribly and she had to gather herself to even raise her hand, but after much hard work she managed to pull herself up to sit on the edge of the tub she had woken in look around the room. It was tiny, just large enough for her former resting place and a small locker, with a glowing orange spiral on the front. She used both her arms and her legs to shuffle along the edge until she could lean forward drunkenly and pry at the locker door. It opened with a hiss to show her a neatly folded shirt and trouser set, once white but yellowed with age, a leather belt, and a travelers’ pack.

She slowly pulled the shirt over her head and forced her stiff arms through the sleeves. It was a little short and too thin, but it was better than the nothing she had been wearing. Her hair kept brushing against her shoulders and for some reason the feeling was foreign and startling to her. The trousers fit, but it took her such a long time to balance and get her legs through them that her hair was completely dry when she was dressed.

She found a pair of boots underneath the clothes, and they also fit, and so did the belt. It had a clip for a pouch, but she had no pouch for money or trinkets. Inside the pack was a green tunic of thick roughspun wool, sleeveless but with a white wool shirt with long sleeves folded up inside it. There were also a pair of fur-lined leather gloves that would come up over her wrists, with a buckle to fasten them close around her arms.

The Sheikah paused, one finger still touching the fur inside a glove. She knew what fur was. She knew what wool was, what the different weaves and grades of it in the tunics meant for how they were supposed to be worn. She knew what clothes were, how to walk, how to tie her boot laces. Yet she knew nothing about herself, not even her own name. Nor did she know how she knew she was Sheikah; she had seen herself in the murky reflection of the locker, her white hair and wide-set eyes, and known.

There was a tapping sound coming from the door to the room.

When she forced her legs to bear her weight and carry her to the door, she opened it to find a young Gerudo on the other side, looking equally lost and nervous, wearing identical clothing to her own and clutching an identical travelers’ pack in one hand.

The Gerudo made a nervous grimace that was probably a smile, took a deep breath, and mumbled, “I heard machine noises here.”

The Sheikah nodded, waved her hands towards the tub, and gathered herself to speak, but the Gerudo peered around her and nodded, gesturing to her own body and back. The Sheikah pointed, as if to say ‘you too?’ and the Gerudo nodded, tugging at her long fire-red hair with a disgusted face, showing the same sticky residue that was making the Sheikah’s shorter hair stiff as well.

“Where are we?” the Sheikah asked, startling herself with the soft sound of her voice.

The Gerudo shrugged, and then took a few steps back and beckoned her to follow.

They walked slowly down a long hallway. There were six more doors, and she assumed that there were other people sleeping behind them, but they were locked and knocking got no response. They came to a stairway leading up.

The Gerudo advanced on it suspiciously, walking light on the balls of her feet and her arms ready to defend herself. The Sheikah followed more clumsily, envying the other girl her grace so soon after what had felt like rising from the grave.

The narrow stair ended in a door into a wider passage, this one piled with dusty and rotting crates and chests. The Gerudo pawed through them, but everything was spoiled and turned to dust.

The Sheikah took a few hesitant steps towards the back of the seeming dead end, looking at a heavy door. It pulled up into the ceiling with a horrific grinding at her touch, and she crept in cautiously, the Gerudo right behind her.

A fair-haired boy was sleeping there in a tub like the ones further down, in the center of the room. He was wearing dark short trousers and his hair was pulled back neatly from his face, unlike how they had been laid out. There was also a tub beyond him with a fair-haired girl sleeping, dressed in a white robe and her hair fanned out around her head, floating in the liquid.

A clunk and beep drew the Sheikah from her contemplation of the boy and girl, and she saw the Gerudo lifting a small flat object from a pedestal near the door that she hadn’t even seen. The thing lit up with the Sheikah Eye, and an impersonal voice from nowhere stated, “That is a Sheikah Slate. It will guide you on your journey. Take it.”

The Gerudo looked at it, faltered, and held it out to the Sheikah with a smile. As soon as her fingers touched the blue light on the face of the slate, it spoke again. “Hold the slate over the pedestal.”

The Sheikah cautiously waved the slate flat over the pedestal, but nothing happened. She frowned and twisted her wrist to hold it glowing side down, and the pedestal chirped and lit with orange. A cube rose from within the pedestal, unfolded, and revealed two small pouches.

“They are Sheikah Pouches. They will hold any item you desire to carry on your journey. Take them.”

The Sheikah hesitantly removed the pouches from the cube, and it sank back into the pedestal again. She considered them and then held one out to the Gerudo, who looked surprised, but clipped it to her belt.

“Press the buttons on the pouches to store or remove any item you desire. Voice commands can be enabled.”

There was a pause, and the slate spoke again. “Place the slate in the pedestal to open the outer door.”

The Sheikah hadn’t seen an outer door, and the impression the slate had been resting in in the pedestal in front of her had disappeared when the cube rose. The Gerudo made a soft huffing sound of recognition and beckoned her to follow.

There was a pedestal on the other side of the room with the crates. It had a thin arm sticking up from it, and the Sheikah placed the slate gently into it. It grabbed it, spun it in a quarter-turn, and sank to lie flat with the stone. The lights changed from orange to blue on the pedestal and a door neither of them had noticed slid apart, letting a wave of fresh air and light into the dusty cave.

The Sheikah clipped the pouch to the back of her belt, grabbed the slate from the pedestal and hung it from a loop on the front of her belt, and ran after the Gerudo, who was hurrying down the tunnel towards the sun.

After a short scramble over a mound of fallen earth, they climbed out of the mouth of the cave and waded through tall grass to the edge of a precipice. The Sheikah and the Gerudo stood together, looking out over a vast green land bathed in the light of the rising sun.

After a long moment spent blinking down into the green haze, searching for anything that looked familiar, the Sheikah was roused by a light touch on her hand. The Gerudo was nodding back towards the trees scattered around the base of the cliff their cave was in. She was also carrying a sturdy stick in her other hand.

They found acorns fallen under the trees, and large red spotted mushrooms. The Sheikah recognized the mushrooms and knew they were safe to eat, but again, she didn’t know how she knew. They wandered down the ancient remains of a path going down from the cave.

There was a short gnarled tree laden with fat red apples growing up against the cliff. The Sheikah looked at them hanging temptingly above her head and felt her stomach twist in hunger. The Gerudo, beside her, tried jumping for one but it slipped through her fingers. The Sheikah cautiously ran her fingers over the bark and then pushed herself off the ground with a foot, reaching up and pulling herself up the trunk by using the tiny bumps and cracks in the bark. Her muscles burning from the strain, she perched on a sturdy branch and grabbed as many apples as she could, twisting them off their stems and handing them down to the Gerudo.

They continued on down the path after that, the Gerudo brandishing her stick defensively at every rustle in the bushes and the Sheikah with a shirt full of apples and mushrooms. Not far from the apple tree there was a small overhang in the cliff. An old fire ring was set up there, and just below it was a chopping block with a sturdy axe embedded in it. The Gerudo dropped her stick and heaved the axe free, giving it a few test swings and shrugging. She turned to the Sheikah and made a face, as if to say ‘better than nothing’.

The Sheikah slowly fed the apples and mushrooms into her pouch, whose mouth widened to accommodate them and then closed innocently. She had all their food in there now, and a small icon of an apple was lit up. There were also icons showing a sword, a shield, a bow, a shirt, a skull, and a piece of money. She then picked up the Gerudo’s discarded stick. She wasn’t feeling as cautious as the Gerudo about their surroundings, but it couldn’t hurt to take precautions. Besides, it was a sturdy stick and she might be able to use to as the base of a makeshift shelter for wherever they ended up resting. Even though it was still morning, she was tired.

Ahead of her, the Gerudo froze mid-step and made a quick hand motion.

“Enemy ahead. One. Lure them back to me.”

The Sheikah stepped around her and continued down the path, not questioning either the idea of playing bait for the Gerudo or how she had known what the motions had meant.

A few steps farther down the slope she saw their enemy: a short red creature with a piglike snout and hands that were waving in the air as it sniffed around. She deliberately stepped on a twig, making it snap satisfyingly, and then turned to run as the creature’s head whirled around and its eyes widened as it began to charge at her.

She ran past the Gerudo crouching in the bushes and didn’t stop until she heard a grunt, a thud, and a squeal. When she turned around she saw the Gerudo standing over the fallen body of the creature, holding the axe in both hands and looking satisfied. Then she leapt back, almost dropping the axe, as instead of bleeding out, the creature disintegrated into a puff of purple ooze, leaving behind only a few fragments of horn and teeth to show that it had ever been there.

The Sheikah made a strangled sound of disbelief and confusion. The Gerudo shrugged, palms open and out, having let the axe lean against her leg. Then she bent and picked up a horn and a tooth from the ground, examining them curiously, and tucked them into her pouch.

“Why?” the Sheikah asked.

The Gerudo frowned, opening her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out, just a soft ‘hunh’. She tried again, saying ‘hynuh’. Finally she mimed something, but the Sheikah had no idea what it was.

“Never mind,” said the Sheikah. “Later.”

The Gerudo looked up from running one of her hands through her hair in short jerky motions, her face red.

The Sheikah tried to smile reassuringly.

They followed the path down as it curved around a hollow in which was the skeleton of a stone building. Along the way they were ambushed by a small blue blob with red eyes that dropped from a tree, but between them they drove it back and then it too exploded into a purple fog, leaving behind a quivering pile of blue goop. The Gerudo stored that away too, saying with effort this time, “Sell.”

The Sheikah hadn’t even thought of that; they’d have to get money from somewhere, to buy better clothes, to buy food. She looked at the diamond-ended rectangle icon on her pouch that she knew was for money and tried to remember what they were called. Rupees, her mind provided. Green were the least value, gold the most.

They passed another apple tree, leaving the fruit on it for later by unspoken agreement, and as the path leveled out they saw a grass-covered stone staircase leading up the side of yet more stone ruins, that turned into a wall that wound up the edge of another smaller hill to a tall ruined temple with a spire of stone standing proud and lonely against the blue sky. There was another one of the red creatures standing in the middle of the stairs, and it was armed with a crude wooden club.

Acting on instinct, the Sheikah ran forward to crouch behind the low stone wall that lined the road up to the stairs. She waited until the creature’s back was turned and then inched forward until her cover ran out and with a hiss, sprang out and whacked it hard across the face with her stick. It screamed and dropped the club in surprise, and she snatched it up, tossing her stick behind her, and hit it again and again until it exploded and she was left with a tooth and two horns.

The Gerudo was behind her, still lifting the axe to swing, and she stared at her in amazement before nodding and giving her a thumbs-up. The Sheikah blushed, and threaded the handle of the crude club through a weapon loop on her belt. It felt like it would crack soon, but it would serve until she found something better.

They continued up to a landing. There was the remains of a building there, open to the sky, the walls not much taller than their heads, with yet another red creature inside; this one they didn’t see until it was almost too late and then club and axe swung together and destroyed it in one reflexive hit. The Gerudo picked up the single horn and the club, eyeing it critically and then strapping the axe across her back and hefting the club instead.

Inside the next ruined building further up the hill was a giant metal thing, with four long scaled legs, two hacked off and just stumps, resting tilted up on a fallen chunk of stone. It looked a little like an inverted flowerpot resting on spider legs. They both eyed it with foreboding. The Gerudo refused to go near it, but the Sheikah went up to run her hands over the rusting metal. She bent and picked up a screw from the ground and put it in her pouch. It looked familiar somehow.

When they were outside again they noticed that many of the flowerpot metal things lay rusting around the buildings, some half-buried, some just the shell, some with legs outstretched as if they’d been in mid-sprint when they crashed.

Going up mossy stairs to their left, they saw a pond in a hollow and three more of the metal things perched on a dirt hill, lined up in assault formation upon the proud tower of the highest and most untouched building.

The Gerudo went first up the stairs and was ambushed by a red creature, but a few whacks with her club took care of it and the Sheikah arrived too late to help finish it off. The Gerudo finished picking up her loot, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, and scowled. 

“Why so many?”

The Sheikah shrugged. “Hunting?”

They entered the temple together.

Inside, the entirety of the right wall was still standing, while the left had gaping holes. The roof was mostly intact, especially on the right, and it gave them some security to look around while not fearing to be ambushed from nowhere. 

In an alcove by the door to the right, the Gerudo found a chest with a small wooden bow resting inside and gleefully added it to her back with the axe. There was also a quiver that she hung off the back of her belt. Meanwhile, the Sheikah found some small sealed clay pots and broke them open to find several bundles of arrows and a single green rupee.

They divided up their loot, the arrows going to the Gerudo and the rupee tucked away in the Sheikah’s pouch, and turned to the enormous statue at the end of the long temple hall, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight and with tiny fairies fluttering around it.

The Sheikah stepped gingerly up on the dais and looked up at the worn statue of the woman. “Hylia,” she whispered. “That’s the only name I remember.”

“Yours?”

She started at how close behind her the Gerudo was, but answered. “Hers. I think. I don’t remember mine.”

“Neither do I. No names. Just — a mission. To protect.”

“Protect what?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I was one of her priestesses. Or given to her. I served her every day, all the time. I lived for her.”

“How do you know the name wasn’t yours?”

The Sheikah shrugged. “It might have been. It doesn’t feel right to use it now.”

“Hy? Short. Could be anything.”

“Hy. Hy,” the Sheikah repeated. “It’ll do, until I find something better. You?”

The Gerudo shook her head. “No memories.”

“It’s all right.”

The Gerudo nodded. Hy was starting to realize that unlike her, the Gerudo had a problem with speaking even to people she knew. Hy knew somehow that she herself could be very talkative with close friends, but with strangers, it was hard to make the words cross from her brain to her mouth without long silences. It was eerie to know things about herself without knowing why.

They turned away from the statue and wandered out the left side of the building and down the hill behind it, sliding down the grassy slope and down into a meadow full of tiny flowers in the grass. Bees droned over their heads, and the sun was pleasantly warm. The smoke from a fire spiraled up in the near distance.

They walked slowly towards it, crouching to make themselves as stealthy as possible. Soon they could see the source of the fire; a small camp of the red creatures. Two of them were sitting around a fire under a lone tree.

Hy was sizing them up for an attack when the Gerudo patted her arm and then pointed towards the tree.

"What?" Hy mouthed.

The Gerudo pointed at the tree again, then slowly drew back her bow and nocked an arrow. Hy watched, confused, as she shot the tree.

Then a bees' nest dropped from the tree and an angry swarm of bees attacked the two red creatures, driving them away from their camp. The Gerudo sprinted for their camp, leaving Hy to flounder behind her. The Gerudo jumped over a log the red creatures had apparently been using as a windbreak for the fire and snatched something up, hurling it towards her, and then picked up a flimsy bark shield from where it had been resting against the log and charged the red creatures, who were just starting to recover from the surprise of suddenly being attacked by angry bees.

Hy picked up the thing the Gerudo had thrown at her, which turned out to be a crude bow, and looked at it dubiously. It was rough and looked like it wouldn't last long, and more importantly, she had no idea how to use it. Nor did she have any arrows. She watched, feeling helpless, as the Gerudo dispatched the two red creatures effortlessly, taking the blow one of them managed to land on her on the shield and spinning to crack it over the head with her club.

The Gerudo returned to the fire, grinning, and together they went through the wooden crates by the fire, finding more arrows and two more green rupees, which Hy carefully tucked away in her pouch.

"Should we camp here?" Hy asked.

The Gerudo shook her head, standing up from where she had carefully been scraping honey from the hive she'd shot down into a bottle she had produced from somewhere. "House," she said, pointing to the west.

Hy turned around to see that there was a small cabin in the distance, half hidden under a small knoll of rock. She nodded. "But the fire."

The Gerudo shrugged. "Carry," she suggested, and picked up a new club to hold on her belt, lighting the old one in the fire.

They found not only a fire pit built by the dilapidated cabin, but a cooking pot on three legs standing over it. It was a bit rusty, but neither of them cared. They lit the fire under the pot and sifted through the food they had collected on their way down from the cave they had woken in.

While they were roasting the acorns and apples in the ashes, Hy investigated the cabin, finding an old handwritten book in a sealed pot, another green rupee, the remains of a bed, and a tiny well covered by a lid. She dunked her head in it, washing out as much of the strange fluid gunk as she could. Then she went out to watch the fire and the Gerudo took her turn washing herself.

They sat by the fire most of the day, half dozing, letting the sun soak into their bones and dry their hair. As the sun went down and the stars got brighter, they moved closer to the fire and to each other, ending up shoulder to shoulder, leaning on each other.

Hy was nearly asleep when she heard the Gerudo speak. 

"We'll be fine," she said, almost inaudibly. "We'll be fine."


	2. the cabin on the plateau

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hy and the Gerudo settle into the old cabin on the plateau, remember what bokoblins are called, and find that there are scary things lurking in the ruins.

When Hy woke the next morning, she felt the sun on her face. She also felt the Gerudo curled up beside her, snuffling into her neck. She looked around as best she could. There was a thin layer of dew on everything and the fire had gone out, but it wasn't unpleasant. They were alive and it hadn't been a dream.

The Gerudo woke as she untangled herself from her, stretching lazily and making all her joints from her neck to her ankles crack. Hy watched with a rising sense of exasperation and familiarity, crawling up to sit on the long fallen log that served as a southern windbreak for the fire.

They started the fire again and ate the remains of last night's feast: cold roasted apples and acorns. The Gerudo was jealously guarding the honey from the beehive, but the apples were sweet and didn't need it anyway. 

As they ate, Hy spotted another spiral of smoke in the near distance to the west.

"Camp, probably," said the Gerudo, nodding. She reached over and checked her weapons. 

"Of the monsters?" Hy asked.

"Bokoblins!" the Gerudo said excitedly. "They're called bokoblins. Omnivores. The big ones are moblins. Carnivorous."

"Huh." Hy considered this. "That does sound familiar."

They grinned at each other.

"Um, about this," Hy said nervously as she watched the Gerudo pick up her club and shield, getting ready to head out and fight some bokoblins. "I don't know how this works." She pointed at the crude bow the Gerudo had gotten her yesterday.

The Gerudo looked surprised for a moment, then worried. "Want to learn?"

"I, um, yes."

The Gerudo nodded once. "This evening. Come on."

They crept to the brow of the ridge west of their cabin and looked down into a small valley between the ridge and the side of the mountain that towered over all the plateau. There was a bokoblin camp there, with some kind of meat being roasted on a spit and one soldier on guard duty. The rest were gathered around the fire, dancing and waving spears.

The Gerudo drew her bow, breathed in and out, and shot the sentry neatly in the head. It fell from its guard tower with a soft thud, vanishing in the now-expected cloud of purple ooze, leaving behind a bow and a few arrows as well as a horn and a fang.

The other bokoblins were oblivious.

The Gerudo shot the closest one. It fell into the fire, its spear going up in flames, and the rest began screaming, grabbing their weapons and looking around.

After the fight was over, Hy and the Gerudo were richer by five rupees, a large chunk of half-cooked boar and a fair amount of apples and acorns, two bows, a dozen arrows, two more shields, and an armful of more clubs and crude spears. They dragged their loot back to their cabin and examined it.

Hy watched in surprise as the Gerudo produced another beehive from her pouch and began scraping the honey into the bottle. It was overflowing when she was finished.

The Gerudo caught her look and laughed silently. "Cave," she said, licking her fingers. "Found these too." She dropped some mushrooms, green ones with a wide flat cap, in Hy's lap.

"Where did you get the bottle?"

The Gerudo pointed to her pack.

Hy went through her own pack and found two bottles, a flint and steel, and a pocketknife.

"One for water, one for honey," said the Gerudo. "You should be the same."

"Why are you saving the honey?"

"Useful. Food, bribe, medicine, bait."

Hy frowned. She knew the Gerudo was right, but the idea of baked apples drizzled in honey was very appealing.

They spent the rest of the day working on their weapons. The Gerudo used the shield she had to reinforce a better one, made of bone and bark. Hy checked the arrows over, using the few ones bent and splintered beyond usefulness as kindling and saving their bone tips for later. They also sharpened the stick-spears and chose two clubs that were the least battered to use as their primary weapons.

They slept that night in front of the fire again, greasy with boar fat and with no more reservations about sharing the narrow soft hollow in the shelter of the log.

Hy spent the next day happily mixing up mud to fill the cracks between the logs of their little cabin. It was dilapidated, but the frame was sound and they agreed they quite liked it there, on the edge of a little wood, near the high edge of the plateau, and with a beautiful view of a large lake to the southeast. It would take more effort to fix up the roof, but filling in the gaps in the walls was easy and made it safer.

She met a strange little creature who lived on the peak of the roof, who shrieked with laughter when she found it and then was shocked she could see and hear it. The Gerudo could see it too, and they learned that it was a kind of woodland spirit called a Korok. It gave them a strange smelly little beige seed and went back to sleep.

As Hy worked, she could hear the faint rattling noise the Korok made as it snored. It was oddly soothing.

The Gerudo spent the day cooking, drying the apples and mushrooms they had scavenged over the fire and making jerky out of what was left of the boar meat. Hy had offered to help, but the Gerudo clearly had skill that she lacked, so she decided her time was better spent fixing the cabin. 

Late in the day Hy followed the Gerudo as she walked north along the edge of the plateau, searching for food or for bokoblins to fight. They came across some stone walls that were the remains of a building and began to investigate them. After she climbed up on the top of one of the first walls, Hy saw a small building in the center of the complex. It was roughly oval, like a tiny cave, and had glowing orange lights in a flowing design decorating its walls. The Gerudo scrambled up beside her and stared at it too.

Hy felt a touch on her belt. She looked down to see the Gerudo tapping the slate that still hung from her hip. The design and the color did look similar to the building. Maybe it was Sheikah too.

They exchanged a look and climbed down the wall, picking their way through the rubble and the remains of metal monsters that littered the ground here like they did at the ruined temple.

Suddenly one of the metal monsters, that they had thought dead, turned its head. Lights flashed on all over its body, an eerie pink-red that made Hy freeze. The head spun around until a single glowing blue eye spotted them and then a red laser dot appeared on Hy's chest.

The Gerudo tackled her to the muddy ground and a beam of light went over their heads, hitting the stone wall and sending up an explosion. Hy flinched as the ground shook and even from where she was lying mostly under the Gerudo, she felt bits of rock pelt her exposed skin.

They watched through the grass as the monster turned its head around several times as if searching for them, and then the lights died and it lapsed into sleep once again.

The Gerudo began to slowly wriggle backwards, out and away from the monster, tugging Hy with her.

"But the Sheikah building!" Hy whined.

"We'll come back tomorrow," the Gerudo hissed, forcibly dragging Hy away by the ankle. "We can sneak around the Guardian if we figure out its sight lines."

It wasn't until she was nearly asleep that night, by a tiny fire in the cabin with the door blocked off by wood they had cut, her head pillowed on the Gerudo's chest, that Hy realized that the Gerudo had called the metal monster a 'Guardian', and more importantly, she could remember the basics of how they worked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my brain has produced more. I have plans for at least getting them off the Great Plateau, but after that it may take me a long time to come up with anything more. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	3. bombs

Hy woke up alone the next morning, which was disconcerting. She could smell the fire outside, and hear the soft rattling of the Korok and some surprisingly sweet humming.

The Gerudo stopped humming when Hy emerged from the cabin and smiled at her, holding out a skewer with chunks of meat and mushroom on it. Hy took it gladly and nibbled on it, wincing as hot fat touched her face.

"Is there anyone else?"

The Gerudo's question hung between them. Hy had carefully been avoiding thinking it since she first stood looking out over the land after coming out of the cave where they had been sleeping. What if they were the only living things left except the monsters and the animals?

"Maybe the shrine will tell us," she suggested after finishing her skewer.

The Gerudo gave her a weird look. "Shrine?"

"The — the thing in the ruins," Hy floundered. "It's called a shrine. I think? I don't know, I didn't plan to say it."

"Shrine works," said the Gerudo, and patted her leg. "Memories are strange."

Hy nodded. "Have you remembered anything good?"

A shadow flickered over the Gerudo's face. "Remembered, but not good."

"Oh."

They traveled lightly as they set off to investigate the shrine. Hy took a club and nothing else, and the Gerudo took a shield, a spear, and her bow. They had packed food and water in their pouches so it would not slow them down.

The Gerudo led them around the back of where they had gone the day before, along the crumbling wall that ringed the plateau. At one point they walked along the top of a section that was still intact and looked down on the grassy hills below them.

"Look," the Gerudo whispered, pointing down. "A moblin."

"It's guarding a road," Hy realized. "Maybe there is someone else out there. They probably just don't travel much if there are so many monsters around."

"Doesn't matter."

"What? Why?"

"Can't get down."

Hy looked down again. It was true. A fall would kill them, and there was no way to climb down a wall that high without proper gear. "There must be a way down. How did the bokoblins get up here?"

The Gerudo just shrugged and put a finger to her lips.

They crept around the back side of the complex that housed the shrine and slipped over the wall. It stood there, sticking up out of the ground like an alien rock, its back to them. The Gerudo made Hy stay back as she padded around the small space enclosed by the crumbling walls, checking the sight lines, until she was sure it was safe and no rusting Guardian could spot them as they examined the shrine.

The shrine was oval, half a platform open to the sky and half a circular vault. Hy presumed the door was in the wall on the platform, but there was no obvious way to open it. There was a small pedestal like the ones in the cave where they had woken, but when she placed the slate on it nothing happened. The Gerudo tried to help, but Hy waved her away, half fascinated by the puzzle the shrine presented her and half frustrated that she could not recall something she had known once about this structure that hovered mockingly just out of her grasp.

After trying unsuccessfully to pry open the pedestal to see if it was damaged, Hy handed the slate over to the Gerudo and leaned back against the wall. The Gerudo looked at the face of the slate for a moment and then gently placed it face down against the top of the pedestal. 

There was a soft hiss and the design on the pedestal’s face turned blue. Then there was a chirp and the same voice from the slate spoke from the pedestal. "Sheikah Slate confirmed. Travel Gate registered to map."

Hy shrieked and jumped away from the platform as a circular design on the end of it lit up in brilliant blue.

"What is that," the Gerudo said, eyeing it suspiciously, having already snatched the slate away and holding it close.

"Access granted."

The wall Hy had been leaning against seconds before parted in the middle and swung inwards in many long strips, revealing a similar glowing blue circle to the one outside, but with the Sheikah eye symbol in the center. There was a small raised lip at the back of it with a button 

The Gerudo advanced on it cautiously, Hy right behind her. She hesitated as she bent down to touch the button.

"What does it do?"

"I don't know," Hy said. "I thought there might be supplies in here, or books or treasure."

The Gerudo pressed the button. Nothing happened for a long moment and then blue steam rose up from the edges of the circle with a hiss. The floor beneath their feet shuddered and then they were moving down, the blue circle a platform in a tube of white-blue beams of light.

They descended fast and for what felt like eternity. The platform stopped with a clank at the bottom of the shaft and they jumped off of it as it neatly sank into a shallow depression in the floor. A bell tolled as they looked around the room.

"To you who sets foot in this shrine, I am Ja Baij. In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I offer this trial. Bomb Trial."

The echoing voice stopped. They looked at each other.

"I don't have any bombs," said Hy.

"You were right about your Goddess being named Hylia."

"I don't think that's important right now."

The Gerudo shrugged, and checked over her weapons.

Hy looked around the room they had landed in. It was large and square, with a shallow ramp in front of them leading down to a wall of crumbling stone. The rest of the walls were of some smooth black material, decorated with patterns in bronze and blue. There was a pedestal to their left with a stalactite hanging over it, looking very out of place in the polished room.

They advanced cautiously on the pedestal. Hy noted that it was one she could set the slate into, unlike the smooth one outside that was apparently only meant to scan the slate. She cautiously set the slate in the holder, still startled by the speed it was spun around and clicked into place.

"Sheikah Slate authenticated. Distilling rune."

"What is a rune?" the Gerudo asked.

"An ancient type of writing,I think," Hy answered, tipping her head back to stare as blue script lit up and flowed down the now-glowing stalactite, gathering into a single drop of blue light that fell onto the slate with a silent splash. She blinked in the flare and when she looked up again the light in the stalactite had faded.

The normal screen the slate showed, black with a blue Sheikah eye on it, disappeared. A new screen appeared with six boxes in a row. The two on the left lit up, showing a circle and a square. Hy read the short description under them and gasped. "Look, it can make bombs!"

The Gerudo leaned over her shoulder and frowned heavily at the screen. Hy glanced up to see her eyes tracking across it too aimlessly to be reading. The Gerudo caught her looking and the tips of her ears reddened as she ran a hand through her hair.

"I can't remember how to read that," she said quietly. "If I ever knew."

"Oh!" said Hy. "I can read it to you, if you want?"

The Gerudo nodded, so she read, "A bomb that can be detonated remotely. The force of the blast can be used to damage monsters or destroy objects. There are both round and cube bombs, so use whichever best fits the situation."

She took the slate from the pedestal and held it gingerly. The Gerudo studied the screen for a moment longer and then pressed firmly on the round bomb icon. There was a click and then she was holding a glowing blue sphere about the size of her head. Hy looked at it in panic but the Gerudo just set it on the ramp, where it rolled slowly down to rest against the crumbling bricks. She then pressed the button again and the bomb exploded, sending bits of rock and dust flying through the air.

The Gerudo beamed. "Useful!"

"I suppose," Hy agreed, following her cautiously down the ramp and further into the shrine.

They found two walls to explode in the next room, one concealing a metal chest with a strange lock that opened with a hiss. Inside was a long steel sword. The Gerudo's eyes lit up and she tucked it away carefully on her back.

"Claymore," she said. "Heavy and slow but good for bowling monsters over."

"I think I prefer my club," said Hy.

The other wall had covered the way forward, which was around a corner and up a small ladder. They faced another crumbling wall after climbing it, but this one was on the other side of a large gap. They could climb down into the gap with a provided ladder, but it was taller than both of them stacked together.

A square stone platform with the Sheikah eye lit up in blue on it began to slowly float back and forth from one side of the gap to the other. Hy was so absorbed in trying to work out what was powering it and how it was levitating that she missed the Gerudo gently plucking the slate from her hands to summon a square bomb, cautiously testing her weight on the platform, and then setting the bomb on it and quickly stepping back before it drifted away again to the side of the gap with the wall. She did notice when the Gerudo detonated the bomb, sending stone chips flying and clearing the way for them to move forward.

She let the Gerudo pull her on to the platform, which was big enough for both of them if they stood together, and they held on to each other for balance as it moved them across the gap.

Across the next room they could see a strange cube. It glowed with a blue light, had a base and a top that looked eerily similar to the tubs they had woken in, and had an indistinct figure sitting in it.

They passed the last challenge by using a piston to launch a round bomb across the room and break the last wall in their way. Along the way the Gerudo catapulted herself into the air while testing a piston and rolled to a stop by another metal chest they hadn't noticed. It had a large chunk of amber in it, which she carefully passed down to Hy to store in her pouch.

After they climbed up the last ladder they warily approached the box. This close, they could see that there was a person sitting inside, with long white hair and skin dark and wrinkled with age. Together they edged up a small staircase to a little landing and touched a flickering image of a Sheikah eye on the side of the box.

There was a clang as the blue light making the sides of the box wavered and dissolved, and then the same bell they had heard when they entered the shrine began to toll slowly and the voice spoke again. 

"You have proven to possess the resolve of a true hero. I am Ja Baij, the creator of this trial. I am but a humble monk, blessed with the sight of Goddess Hylia and dedicated to those who seek to defeat Ganon. With your arrival, my duty is now fulfilled. In the name of Goddess Hylia, allow me to bestow this gift upon you. Please accept this Spirit Orb."

Hy and the Gerudo looked at each other in confusion, for the monk on the dais in front of them hadn't moved. Then they jumped backwards as a small smoky orb sped from the monk's chest. It darted towards them, hesitated for an instant, and then split into two and sank into their own chests as they lay tangled together on the floor at the foot of the stairs.

Hy felt a gentle surge of energy flow through her, healing the small scrapes and cuts she had gotten since she woke and clearing the tiredness of the day away. Then the bell tolled for a last time and the voice spoke again, softer and quieter, as the body before them melted away into ash in a haze of green.

"May the Goddess smile upon you."

The room melted away into a haze of blue and she could see nothing at all.


	4. in which they each remember a thing important to them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m not dead just distracted
> 
> also i got to hold a cute dog while writing part of this! it came up and snuffled around my boots and then jumped in my lap

They landed on their feet on the blue circle outside the shrine, staggering and dizzy. They clutched each other for balance, Hy's arms ending up around the Gerudo's neck and the Gerudo holding her around the waist. She patted her hip to make sure the slate was still there and then stretched to lean her chin on top of Hy's head, waiting for the ground to stop swirling beneath them.

"That was incredible," Hy finally squeaked. "I never dreamed something like that was inside a shrine."

"Bombs," the Gerudo agreed happily. "Very useful."

"No, well, yes, the upgrades to the slate are fascinating, but I mean, the sheer feat of engineering that was down there! The levitating platforms alone could be used for —" She stopped suddenly. "I don't remember what I could have done with them."

The Gerudo snorted comfortingly into her hair. "Better than remembering and wanting not to."

"I'm not so sure."

"It is."

They were quiet for a while, until the dizziness wore off and they let go of each other, climbing back over the wall and heading back to the cabin. Even though it hadn't seemed like they had spent long down in the shrine, the sun was high and they were tired. 

"Do you really only remember bad things?" Hy asked as they trudged through the tall grass, sending crickets hopping away from them with almost every step.

The Gerudo shrugged. "Mostly only one memory, but —" She flapped her hands, curving them into claws. "Malice, choking. Couldn't breathe, couldn't see. Couldn't use my weapon, it wouldn't work. Only hearing friends die. Family. Love. Then just dark. And then I was here."

"Oh. I didn't realize, I mean, I wouldn't have asked about it if I'd known it was like that."

The Gerudo patted her hand. "Feels better now. Call me Zel."

Hy blinked. "You remembered your name?"

Zel shrugged again. "I don't know. Zel is important. I will use it as a name so I don't forget."

"All right," Hy agreed.

After their tiring morning, Hy and Zel spent the rest of the day sleeping in the sun after washing off the dust of the explosions. As a consequence, they were awake and restless as the sun set and the pale light of a crescent moon began to glint off the rock face in the near distance. Zel spent a while cooking up some skewers of mushroom and apple she had squirreled away in the cabin, but after they were gone, the fire had burned low, and they had licked their fingers clean, there was nothing to do.

"Look," Zel said, pointing up and to the side. Hy squinted at the cliffs she seemed to be pointing at but saw nothing.

"What?"

"Something is glowing. Amber-yellow. Like the bomb shrine."

"Well, there is more than one," Hy said practically. "They're scattered all over Hyrule. Most of the roads have at least one on the side somewhere, and prosperous towns do too."

Zel stared at her. "Hyrule?"

Hy stared back. "I think it's what this land is?" she eventually offered. "I don't remember memories like you, I just start talking and then my mouth says things."

Zel prodded the embers with a stick. "You say useful things, at least. Not like me."

"I'd have been killed by that Guardian if it wasn't for you, not to mention being hungry," Hy objected. "We've got each other. We're stronger together."

Zel dipped her head. "We should go see what is in that shrine."

"It's halfway up a mountain, and it's nighttime," Hy objected. Zel rolled her eyes.

"In the day. We could climb up."

"Up the cliff?" Hy thought doubtfully of the tall and sheer cliff she had noticed in passing. It seemed that the entire side of the mountain here was cliff. "Maybe. But what should we do now? I'm not sleepy."

Zel had a mischievous gleam in her wide blue eyes. "Archery practice," she said, and once the fire was buried, the cabin secured, and they had their weapons, dragged Hy northwest off into the night.

After half a night spent in archery practice at the now-abandoned monster camp down the hill and the rest of the night and some of the early morning spent sleeping by the fire, Hy and Zel turned their attention to finding a way up the cliff to the dull amber glow of the shrine that they could see even in daylight, now that they knew where to look.

First of all, they had to find a way across a deep canyon to the small flat area under the cliff below the shrine. Hy was worried about it, but Zel just whistled a short cheerful tune and picked up the axe she had brought from the hill above the temple. Hy trailed behind her, confused, as Zel trotted through the open wood of pine and apple trees that grew along the edge of the canyon. She selected a tall pine and began to cut it down.

"What are you doing?" Hy asked.

Zel grinned at her between axe swings. She was making swift progress on the tree. "Bridge."

Within a few minutes the tree had fallen across the canyon, resting with several feet of thick trunk on each side. Zel kicked at it to see if it would roll, wedged a few stones beneath it, and started crawling across.

Hy watched anxiously, but Zel made it across easily and stood on the other side. She beckoned to her, holding the log steady on her end as well. Hy grimaced and slid across the log. The bark was rough and while it snagged on her trousers, it made it easier to dig her nails on and hang on securely.

They found a large apple tree on the small plateau as well as two bokoblins that rose from the grass and tried to ambush them. A few whacks with their clubs took care of them, and Zel had more fangs and horns to stash in her pouch. 

They followed the ledge the plateau became until it ended, looking for the best place to start scaling the cliff. At the very end, where it was narrowest, there was a crumbling section of rock that looked very similar to the ones they had used bombs on in the cave. Hy used the slate to conjure a square bomb, Zel placed it, and they retreated to a safe distance before setting it off. 

Behind the wall was a little hollow in the rock, and in the hollow was a chest. It was made of dull silvery metal, unlike the ones in the shrine, but it opened easily, like they had. Inside were half a dozen arrows with strange tips: small red bags instead of arrowheads.

Zel laughed quietly, running her fingers cautiously over the red bags. "Bomb arrows," she said, when Hy looked curious. "Don't let them near fire. They'll explode on impact or in heat. Not so good in the rain. But we'll be able to hunt bokoblins faster with these."

She carefully guided them into her pouch, wrapping them together in the oiled cloth they had rested on in the chest, and cackled again. Hy was slightly alarmed.

They stood looking upwards at the tall cliff. Zel ran her hands over the rough stone, then wedged a foot in and scrambled up a few feet. She looked down at Hy and shrugged. "Not too hard."

"Look over there," Hy said, pointing to their right and up. "There are bits sticking out we could rest on."

Zel slid down and they started climbing further over on the cliff, under a small piece of rock that jutted out over their heads. There were more of them dotted all the way up, so that they could plan a route that stopped on several of them to let them catch their breath.

Hy found climbing to be soothing. Soon enough, everything faded away but the sound of her breath in her ears and the wind on the rocks, the cold roughness of the cracks under her fingers, and the burn of her muscles as they stretched and caught to bear her weight.

She was surprised when she pulled herself over the top of the cliff.

"No fair," Zel complained from below her. Hy turned and lay on the edge, reaching down to grab Zel by the back of her shirt and haul her up. Zel rolled over the edge and batted at Hy's hands. "Fiend," she accused. "Too fast."

Hy lay on her back on the cold ground and laughed, squinting up at the clouds and the bright sun. “You fight things, I climb things. Come on, let’s see what’s in this shrine.”


	5. stasis, or, fun with time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mwahaha i didn’t edit this
> 
> also, impa is staring at me. impa is my cat.

Inside the shrine was another terminal. Hy bounced over to it and slotted the slate in, still enthused from the climb, as a voice announced “To you who sets foot in this shrine, I am Owa Daim. In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I offer this trial. Stasis Trial.”

Zel followed more cautiously, hefting her claymore in her hands and looking around suspiciously. She was not as wary of the outside of the shrine now, nor the way it reacted to the slate, but she didn’t know what might be inside the shrine, and that made her nervous.

There was a chirp as the cascade of light emptied into a drop that landed and splashed on the screen of the slate and over Hy’s hands, and she picked up the slate as the pedestal released it. She scanned the screen and her eyebrows shot up. “It says, ‘Stop the flow of time for an object. Objects stopped in time will store kinetic energy. This stored energy will be expelled when the flow of time resumes. Making good use of the stored energy can move even the largest of objects. Take note of the time needed to recharge it.’ "

“Recharge time,” Zel commented.

“The bombs can’t be made all at once,” Hy argued. “But this is . . . this is amazing. That this thing can change time. How. This shouldn’t even be possible.”

“Does it work?”

Hy pressed some buttons on the screen, frowned, and then held up the slate at eye level and turned in a slow circle. Zel moved to stand behind her. They could see the room through the slate now, like a moving painting. It was a little grainy and yellow-toned. Some things glowed brighter yellow as Hy moved the slate.

“What is the yellow,” said Zel, still suspicious. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the slate, she was just wary of it being more than they understood how to use.

Hy bit her lip and then moved closer to the edge of the platform they stood on, towards a rotating gear that was taller than they were suspended over space between their platform and the next. It was flipping a slab of the stonelike material that the shrine floors were made of over and over. The gear turned green when she was close enough. She pressed a button.

There was a clank and a screech and the gear froze mid-spin, and the slab it was turning froze too, pointing up at the ceiling. Then a clanging sound began and when they looked at the gear through the screen, it had yellow chains around it and was flashing. The flashing sped up until, after about ten seconds, it stopped, the chains on the screen flew off, and the gear began to turn again as if nothing had happened.

Hy’s eyes were round with wonder. “Amazing,” she whispered.

“It builds a bridge,” Zel said, studying the gear and slab arrangement one more time. “Hy. Use the slate when the slab is flat.” She nudged Hy with her elbow, starting her out of her trance.

“Oh! Yes, that makes sense. After all, I think these shrines are a sort of playground for us — or, I suppose, other people who have slates — to learn how best to use these runes.”

Zel sighed and plucked the slate from Hy’s hands, aiming it at the gear and freezing it as the slab rotated down to make a bridge flat enough for them to walk on. She grabbed Hy’s arm. “Hurry.”

They sprinted across the slab and leapt onto the platform on the other side with time to spare before the stasis broke and the gear began to spin again. Hy looked at Zel with a wild grin.

“This is the best day of my life.”

Zel raised an eyebrow. “I thought you remembered nothing before we woke up.”

“Not important.” Then she squeaked and clung to Zel’s arm as something large and heavy went whizzing past them and fell into the abyss below the platforms.

They looked up to see a long ramp, curved up on the edges, with a tube coming down from the ceiling at the top. Every few seconds an enormous stone sphere would drop from the tube, speed down the ramp, and cross the platform they stood on.

“Stasis,” Zel muttered thoughtfully and then dragged Hy across the end of the ramp in an interval between spheres. 

“How are we supposed to get up there?” Hy asked, pointing at a walkway above them that the ramp crossed.

“Running.” Zel held the slate up and waited until a sphere had passed them and was on the edge of the drop before pressing the rune to freeze it. She missed the first time, but caught the sphere on her second try. They ran up the ramp and to the left to the walkway there.

“There’s a chest up there.” Hy nodded up the rest of the ramp to a chest that sat innocently just past the tube that dropped the spheres.

“I’ll catch the sphere, you run up to it,” said Zel, raising the slate again. It took her three tries to catch the sphere late enough for Hy to slip between it and the railing and jog awkwardly up to the chest. She opened it to find a leather and wood shield with a crest in it, two intertwined snakes.

Zel’s eyes were wide when Hy didn’t wait for her to stop a sphere again and instead ran down the ramp right behind one and skidded to land beside her, holding out the shield.

“That was dangerous,” she said.

Hy only shrugged. “It could only roll one way. Is this any good?”

Zel looked the shield over. Like the claymore she had found in the first shrine, the shield was perfectly preserved and ready to use. “Better than what we have.” She gestured for Hy to turn around and helped her hook it onto the strap across her back.

“Don’t you want it?”

“Can’t use it with this big sword. And I can dodge.”

Hy rolled her eyes.

They continued on, finding a large metal hammer at the corner of the walkway, leaning against the wall. The path went on, turning right and narrowing until it was barely wide enough for them to cross in single file. One last giant sphere completely blocked their way, sitting in a shallow depression.

“Read me the explanation,” Zel asked, passing the slate back to Hy. When she reached ‘the stored energy can move even the largest of objects’ she made a sharp sound and picked up the hammer. “Freeze it.”

Hy pressed the rune and on the screen the chains appeared around the sphere. As Zel stepped up to it, hefted the hammer, and began to smack it as hard as she could, she watched as the pulsing green turned orange and then red as an arrow appeared, pointing away from them and towards the blue cage just past the sphere.

Zel stopped and ran back as the timer ticked down and they watched in awe as the sphere burst from its place, flew through the air to hit the top of the blue cage, crashed to the floor, and slowly rolled off into the depths below. Hy glanced over at Zel to see her still holding the hammer and grinning so widely it looked like it hurt.

They went up to the blue cage with the seated monk and touched the Sheikah emblem together. As before, a bell tolled as the cage broke apart and the voice from the beginning spoke.

"You have proven to possess the resolve of a true hero. I am Owa Daim, the creator of this trial. I am but a humble monk, blessed with the sight of Goddess Hylia and dedicated to those who seek to defeat Ganon. With your arrival, my duty is now fulfilled. In the name of Goddess Hylia, allow me to bestow this gift upon you. Please accept this Spirit Orb.”

The orb split between them again, healing their tiredness and scrapes and sore muscles from climbing the cliff, leaving them feeling refreshed and strong. As the monk disappeared, her voice echoed softly through the shrine.

“May the Goddess smile upon you.”

Once again the haze of blue descended on them and they found themselves standing on the lit travel pad outside the shrine, blinking in the sunlight and the cold air.

Hy yawned and stretched. “I could get used to those orb things.”

Zel only nodded, a peaceful smile on her face. She was still holding the hammer, as well as having the claymore strapped to her back.

“Where should we go now?”

Zel pointed up. There was a shorter cliff there, and snow lay on top of it and melted down the sides.

“I wonder what’s up there. We could get a nice view of everything. But how are you going to get that hammer up the cliff?”

Hy sighed in exasperation as Zel gave her a smug look and opened her Sheikah pouch, somehow feeding the hammer into it until it disappeared. 

“Well, now we have a way to smack some rocks around if we need to. Shall we go before the sun starts going down?”


	6. ice

Before continuing on, Hy held up the slate and looked around with stasis on. She found a large boulder just behind the shrine that could be moved, and both of them running at it while it was frozen built up enough momentum to move it out of the hollow it had been in and let them open the chest in the ground below it. There was a bow in the chest, nearly identical in design to the one that Zel had found in the temple. Hy took that one, dropping her cracking bokoblin bow in the dirt.

They half-climbed, half-walked up the rocky ground in front of the shrine, stopping on a peak that faced out towards the cabin below and the mountains beyond that. Hy dug through her pouch for the wool shirt and tunic she had stored there and pulled them on over the thin shirt she had been wearing, shivering as the cold wind brushed her skin. With the gloves on as well, she felt much more prepared to explore.

Zel watched her silently, then nodded and began to dress in her own set of warmer clothes. Hy found herself smiling as she got her hair stuck under the collar of the tunic and had to grab it with both hands to pull it out, where it floated around her head like fire. She reached out to tuck one particularly stubborn piece behind Zel’s ear.

“I didn’t know Gerudo had pointed ears like Hylians,” she said, not having noticed that before.

Zel only shrugged. Then her eyes widened and she pointed frantically over Hy’s shoulder.

“What?” Hy turned around to see a wide lake in the distance, glimmering in the late afternoon sun, spanned by crumbling bridge. An enormous green creature was rising from it, glowing with yellow light. It slithered through the air like a snake, small legs along it flexing dreamily as it spiraled up and up from the water and shook itself before turning to dip leisurely just above the bridge and then keep going, disappearing into the mist on the lake. “What was that?”

“I think it was a dragon,” Zel murmured. “There are three, one for each realm. Earth, water, and sky. That must have been the one for water.”

“How do you know?”

“I remember one. I think. It was cold, and the light was blue.”

They stared after the dragon for a long while, until Zel tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “I hear bokoblins.”

They followed the noise up into the snow and over a ridge, where they crouched to watch three of the monsters dancing around a campfire. One had a sword, and all of them had better shields than what they currently had. There was also a wooden chest sitting a little way back from the fire.

Zel made a quick series of hand signals and then slid noiselessly over the edge of the cliff. Hy set an arrow to the string of her new bow and raised it, letting the feather tickle her cheek as she breathed in and out evenly. Then she shot one of the bokoblins in the head.

It screamed and fell into the fire, where it exploded in a cloud of purple. The other two looked around, waving their claws and screeching. They had just picked up their weapons when Zel was on them, cutting them down with her claymore. Hy slid down the cliff to join her.

They raided the camp, finding a few more rupees and some apples and acorns. The chest was full of several dozen arrows, which they divided between them. Zel gave her a bright grin. 

“There’s another camp up there,” she said, pointing up the slope, where there was a small path crushed into the knee-deep snow by bokoblin feet. The path also went down, to a large icy lake, but neither of them could see anything interesting there beyond a decaying dock and raft that looked like it would fall apart at a touch, only held together by ice. “Saw it when I was climbing down.” She eyed the bow Hy was still holding. “Good shot.”

Hy colored slightly, even though her face was already pink from the cold and the wind off the water. “This bow is easier to use. And I feel like I remember more of how to shoot every time I do it.”

“Same plan for next camp?”

“Of course.”

This time Hy shot two bokoblins from her hiding place in the snow, one through the campfire with a burning arrow in the chest, and one in the leg as it picked up a large red barrel and tried to throw it at Zel. When she got up the slope to join Zel in picking over the loot, she was examining the red barrel with a frown. There were several more of them stacked near cliff the camp was nestled under.

“Nasty,” Zel said, pointing to the skull and bones picture on the barrel. “Bomb. Don’t let it catch fire.”

Hy gave the barrels respectful distance as she picked horns and teeth from the snow, and helped Zel break the lock on another wooden chest which also turned out to be full of arrows.

They followed the bokoblin path up, to the top of the cliff and along it, getting ambushed along the way by a bigger, stronger bokoblin with blue skin instead of red, who was guarding a metal chest. They finally managed to defeat it when Hy tripped and fell as it swiped at her with its club and it fell over her, letting Zel pin it down with her claymore. Zel inspected the quivering purple mass that was left along with the usual horns and teeth when it had gone. She poked it suspiciously, sniffed it and then looked regretful, and then shrugged and scooped it up to store in her pouch. The chest held a large chunk of pale blue-green stone that Hy tenatively identified as an opal.

After that excitement they went on up the path. It was well-traveled, so they were watching for another monster camp.

The path led them up, through snowdrifts and broken pieces of masonry buried in ice. Eventually it began winding up around a small steep hill. When they got to the top, they found a crumbling cairn topped with the remnants of an ancient flag. 

Zel made a soft noise and tugged on Hy's arm as she stood balancing herself against the wind. Hy looked down and to the west where she was pointing and saw another shrine, glowing like fire against the snow.

"Shelter," Zel said. "We can sleep inside."

They ended up sleeping inside the entrance to the shrine, tucked against the back wall, the glowing platform that would take them down covered by their blankets, a fire crackling merrily on the travel gate.

They were woken early by the sun flooding into their east-facing temporary nest, and rolled up their blankets, kicked the ashes of the fire away, and descended into their third shrine.

The expected voice greeted them. 

“To you who set foot in this shrine, I am Keh Namut. In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I offer this trial. Cryonis Trial.”

“What’s a cryonis,” Hy wondered as they went over to the slate terminal and put the slate in. It absorbed another rune and they bumped heads as they bent to look at the new icon on the screen. It was to the right of the stasis rune, and looked like a snowflake.

“Create a pillar of ice from a water surface. Builds ice pillars that are very stable. These pillars can be used as stepping stones or as obstacles. Use Cryonis on an ice pillar to break it,” Hy read from the screen. “What good is that?”

But Zel’s face was glowing. “Everything,” she said in excitement. “Water is everywhere. How much water does it need? Would heavy rain work? We could get anywhere, build anything. Travel in the cold by breaking the ice.”

Hy blinked and reconsidered. “Let’s find out how it works in here and then test it outside. Hey, we could ford rivers with it, by like building a bridge?”

When she took the slate out and pressed the rune, everything she saw when she looked through it glowed blue, and water was a solid, lighter blue. As she moved the slate around, it projected the outline of a rectangular block of ice about twice their height.

They easily passed the first obstacle in the shrine by using the knee-deep pool of water provided to make a block and climb it to get over the wall, and continued on.

Going down some stairs into another knee-deep pond, they came to a gate barring the way. After staring at it and moving the slate around, they made a block under it and watched gleefully as it forced the gate up and held it there so they could easily walk under it.

As they rounded the corner there was a splashing, whirring noise, and Zel screamed and froze. Hy pushed them both back behind the wall they had just come around, falling down and getting completely soaked, just as something shot a beam of light that exploded on the wall, sending dust flying.

Zel was huddled in the water by the wall, eyes shut tight. Hy drew out her bow and peeked around the corner to see a tiny version of the Guardians that had been sleeping around the bomb shrine. She glared at it as its head swiveled around, looking for a new target. When its eye came around again she shot at it, ducked as it staggered and then returned fire faster than she thought it could, and then shot it in the eye again. Two arrows in the eye dealt with it, and it sparked and died, falling apart in a clatter and splash of parts.

Hy stood by the wall and waited until Zel could move, and then took the lead as they moved cautiously towards the wreckage. Kicking viciously at the broken shell seemed to reassure Zel that it really was dead, and she glared hard at it, an embarrassed flush rising in her face.

Hy tactfully ignored it, picking over the bits and finding some salvageable screws and springs.

After that excitement, figuring out the last puzzle, finding a chest with a wood and metal spear in it that Zel took, and once again getting their scrapes and bruises healed by the monk’s blessing (and mysteriously getting dried and warm too) before being transported out into the cold again happened in a blur.

They decided without speaking to burn off the adrenaline by jogging down the mountain, following the remnants of road down a narrow incline between the cliff and the border wall, and across a rotten bridge that on the other end was completely gone, forcing them to use the cryonis rune in its first practical application to finish the crossing. Then Zel noticed a small bokoblin camp in a tree off to the left and they promptly attacked it.

Hy shot down the sentry and the ropes holding up the ramp to get up into the tree platform, and then Zel charged up the ramp with her claymore swinging and the bokoblins were gone almost before they had time to grab their weapons. One blue one put up a fight, but stood no chance between Zel driving it back towards the edge and Hy standing below with her bow. Zel picked up the sword it dropped, inspected it critically, and slid it into her pouch.

“There’s probably a lot of things we missed up there,” Hy said as she joined Zel on the platform and they gathered dropped arrows and the food the bokoblins had stashed. 

Zel shrugged. “We can go back up.”

“Let’s do it later. We should be able to just use the slate to get to the cryonis shrine now and that’ll save a lot of time climbing up the cliff.”

Zel nodded.

“Should we stay here for today? There’s a cooking pot.” What went unsaid was ‘and nothing can sneak up on us here in this tree and the sightlines are really good if we keep watch’.

“Move on tonight? Should be fine. No more big cliffs.”

And with that, they settled in on the platform for an afternoon of bird watching, sitting in the sun, and looking over their gear to be sure nothing had been harmed in their mountain adventure.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a oneshot for now, but I may slowly continue it later. If you want to use an idea or ideas from this, feel free. :)


End file.
